Worse than this, our complete solitude, combined with permanent darkness, began to affect our morale. Men became moping, testy, and imaginative. In the morning, dreams of the night—we could not help using the term—were narrated. Some had visited the naked shores of Cape Warrender, and returned laden with water-melons. Others had found Sir John Franklin in a beautiful cove, lined by quintas and orange-trees. Even Brooks, our hard-fisted, unimaginative boatswain, told me, in confidence, of having heard three strange groans out upon the ice. He “thought it was a bear, but could see nothing!” In a word, the health of our little company was broken in upon. It required strenuous and constant effort at washing, diet, and exercise to keep the scurvy at bay. Eight cases of scorbutic gums were already upon my black-list. One severe pneumonia left me in anxious doubt as to its result. There was, however, little bronchitis.
“December 22, Sunday. The solstice!—the midnight of the year! It commences with a new movement in the ice, the open lead of yesterday piling up into hummocks on our port-beam. No harm done.
“The wind is from the west, increasing in freshness since early in the morning. The weather overcast; even the moon unseen, and no indications of our drift. We could not read print, not even large newspaper type, at noonday. We have been unable to leave the ship unarmed for some time on account of the bears. We remember the story of poor Barentz, one of our early predecessors. One of our crew, Blinn, a phlegmatic Dutchman, walked out to-day toward the lead, a few hundred yards off, in search of a seal-hole. Suddenly a seal rose close by him in the sludge-ice: he raised his gun to fire; and, at the same instant, a large bear jumped over the floe, and by a dive followed the seal. Blinn’s musket snapped. He was glad to get on board again, and will remember his volunteer hunt. Thermometer, minimum, -18°; maximum, -6°. A beautiful paraselene yesterday!
“December 23, Monday. Perfect darkness! Drift unknown. Winds nearly at rest, with the exception of a little gasp from the westward. Thermometer never below -12°, nor above -7°.
“December 24, Tuesday. ‘Through utter darkness borne!’
“December 25. ‘Ye Christmas of ye Arctic cruisers!’ Our Christmas passed without a lack of the good things of this life. ‘Goodies’ we had galore; but that best of earthly blessings, the communion of loved sympathies, these Arctic cruisers had not. It was curious to observe the depressing influences of each man’s home thoughts, and absolutely saddening the effort of each man to impose upon his neighbor and be very boon and jolly. We joked incessantly, but badly, and laughed incessantly, but badly too; ate of good things, and drank up a moiety of our Heidsiek; and then we sang negro songs, wanting only tune, measure, and harmony, but abounding in noise; and after a closing bumper to Mr. Grinnell, adjourned with creditable jollity from table to the theatre.
“It was on deck, of course, but veiled from the sky by our felt covering. A large ship’s ensign, stretched from the caboose to the bulwarks, was understood to hide the stage, and certain meat-casks and candle-boxes represented the parquet. The thermometer gave us -6° at first; but the favoring elements soon changed this to the more comfortable temperature of -4°.
“Never had I enjoyed the tawdry quackery of the stage half so much. The theatre has always been to me a wretched simulation of realities; and I have too little sympathy with the unreal to find pleasure in it long. Not so our Arctic theatre: it was one continual frolic from beginning to end.
“The 'Blue Devils:' God bless us! but it was very, very funny. None knew their parts, and the prompter could not read glibly enough to do his office. Every thing, whether jocose, or indignant, or commonplace, or pathetic, was delivered in a high-tragedy monotone of despair; five words at a time, or more or less, according to the facilities of the prompting. Megrim, with a pair of seal-skin boots, bestowed his gold upon the gentle Annette; and Annette, nearly six feet high, received it with mastodonic grace. Annette was an Irishman named Daly; and I might defy human being to hear her, while balanced on the heel of her boot, exclaim, in rich masculine brogue, ‘Och, feather!’ without roaring. Bruce took the Landlord, Benson was James, and the gentle Annette and the wealthy Megrim were taken by Messrs. Daly and Johnson.
“After this followed the Star Spangled Banner; then a complicated Marseillaise by our French cook, Henri; then a sailor’s horn-pipe by the diversely-talented Bruce; the orchestra—Stewart, playing out the intervals on the Jew’s-harp from the top of a lard-cask. In fact, we were very happy fellows. We had had a foot-race in the morning over the midnight ice for three purses of a flannel shirt each, and a splicing of the main-brace. The day was night, the stars shining feebly through the mist.